Day 3: Monday, Feb 11, Sydney

On Monday we took a tour to the Blue Mountains, a big reserve about two hours west of Sydney. We were on a minibus with about 18 people, including a pair from Berkeley who looked like they were barely 16 (they were 21) and a couple from London. Our guide, John, was from Belgium, though he had obviously been in Australia most of his life. He was a great guide, eager and knowledgeable. He had once been on the bus with a tour group when grapefruit-sized hail struck. He also talked to us about boomerangs and other aborigine tools. He said no one will demonstrate one for you and no one will insure tour companies that demo them because they are dangerous. Any user who doesn’t catch it quite correctly gets a hunk of wood in the eye. I guess it makes sense considering they were originally used as hunting instruments.

Apparently there are enough C/W fans in Australia to warrent a Brooks & Dunn concert in Olympic Park.

After a quick stop at Olympic Park we went to the mountains. The part of the mountains we visited was originally a mining site. Tourists today can go up/down from a ridge via an odd tramcar on a cable at a 52 degree angle. That may not sound too bad, but you’re basically standing on the people below you as you go down. The Blue Mountains get their name from a blue haze that hovers over the mountains. This is actually a result of the light going through evaporated eucalyptus oils from the many eucalyptus trees in the forest below. Nearby are the “Three Sisters,” a rock formation that is what remains of a ridge. Over the years the rest of the rock crumbled away, leaving three tall lumps. They and the valley are beautiful, but what I thought was actually more striking was another rock called Boar’s Head and a nearby ridge that cuts the valley in half. It’s like a mini Grand Canyon, but densely forested smaller.

The Three Sisters through the blue eucalyptus haze of the Blue Mountains.

I would like to pause for a moment to write a diatribe against all talkative and loud Japanese tourists. I’m a tourist myself, so I sure can’t begrudge them the sights, and I sure don’t mind them peacefully sharing the sights with me. I’m sure a lot of them have amazing photo albums. However, when you go somewhere and a guide is talking and along comes a horde of Japanese tourists, it means trouble. They all come and talk loudly amongst themselves, drowning out the guide or ranger who was telling you about the amazing history of this unique ecosystem. If you’re looking at an animal or something temporary, the Japanese crowd the sight like they’re trying to pack onto a rush-hour Japanese subway and out come the cameras. Big SLRs, small pocket cameras, cell phones that won’t come out in the States for another two years, and camcorders. They hold them over each other taking pictures blindly like the paparazzi mobbing a bald Britney Spears. Seriously.  I know why others must not like the stereotypical loud, forward American.

We came back via a candy shop (a “lolli shop” in Australia – that’s some free Aussie lingo) and a wild animal park. The lolli shop was interesting for the range of candies, but after a quick survey it is obvious why a lot of these never appeared on grocery shelves. There were a few good ones, however, including some that looked like OTC medicine boxes, one of which was labeled “Girth Control” and had fake dosing instructions, the other of which had a medical cross and was labeled “Emergency Chocolate” and was a fake emergency ration pack. The wild animal park was outstanding. They had all the Australian animals you’ve heard of as well as a lot of others. I could have spent a lot more time there. My favorite part was the myriad birds that were spectacularly colored and had very interesting calls.

Birds are one thing that is very different down here. Birds we see in cages in pet stores are roaming around here – cockatoos, etc. They are actually considered a nuisance because they will gnaw through windowsills, etc. There are also birds with very different calls. I can’t put them in type, but some are lower and more like voices than bird calls.

Another difference is that their light switches are “backwards.” In the US you typically flip a switch up to turn it on; over here it is reversed. I also saw some ads for apartments around a university near us. Rents ran about A$400/wk which is about US$360/wk. That’s on par with some of the more expensive apartments I’ve seen in downtown Houston, but these aren’t as nice or in as good a location (I think).

When we finished the tour and were back in Sydney we decided to take a ferry to Manly Island and get some fish and chips. As we got off the ferry on Manly someone noticed my dad’s Aggie hat and said he was from Texas, too. He turned out to be a t-sip, but we talked to him anyway. We asked him for restaurant suggestions and he ended up joining us for dinner. He was late 20’s, a petroleum engineer, and just moved to Sydney within the last week. He had visited here while working for an oil company in San Diego and liked it so much that he cold-called places until he got a job. Now he’s starting a “28 days on, 28 off” routine on a well in Papua New Guinea. I think we did him a service by having an American conversation. Manly had a really interesting boardwalk and I enjoyed our time there.

We also stopped to get some more cereal. Sydney is a very expensive city (by the locals’ admission, too.) A 2-liter of Coke costs about US$2.25, 2 liters of milk (about ½ gallon) costs US$3.25, and Fruit Loops cost A$8.00 (US$7.20). Gas is about A$1.30/liter, which comes out to about US$4.50/gallon.

Cars here are also very European with a few exceptions. There are Fords here, but I haven’t seen any Fords that they also sell in the states. They have one that is basically a modern El Camino. My brother spotted our first and only Chevy the other day, and the only Chrysler we have seen is the Chrysler 300. There are Jeeps, however. Otherwise it is all European or Asian cars. I haven’t seen any full-size pickups, though there are some small pickups and a surprising number of SUVs. A good number of the SUVs also have what looks like a vertical exhaust pipe but is actually a snorkel – an air intake so that the engine doesn’t flood when going through deep water.

The people are always an interesting observation. I can count on two hands the number of semi-overweight people (ala Titian models) I have seen. I haven’t seen a single morbidly obese person or child like you frequently see in the U.S. That may be due to my small sample population, because one thing I read said that obesity in Australia is on the rise. However, in Sydney at least it might have something to do with the fact that lots of people use public transportation (requiring some walking), the city seems to have an Austin-like atmosphere of outdoor activity, and some of it might just be genetic.

I’m realizing that besides the obvious benefits of public transportation like less pollution, less congestion, usable reading time, etc., there is another benefit to public transportation: great people-watching. As we rode home that night there were three American girls dressed to go out goofing around in a seat in front of us and taking pictures of themselves. Remember kung-fu guy from the night before? We got to that same bus stop and on comes a shaggy guy who looks out of it. However, he has a good conversation with the bus driver and he is obviously a regular, because he said he hadn’t seen the bus driver in a while and the driver replied that he had been on vacation. The guy then sits down. He talked the entire time we were on the bus trip. It seemed like his problem was that he had to always talk; if he could talk to someone he was fine, but otherwise he talked to himself. He sat down across from the American girls. Half the fun was watching/listening to the guy, but the other half of the fun was watching the girls squirm. Several times he leaned forward like he was having a conversation with them, and at one point he said that he “used to be a sensitive guy, but now I’m not a sensitive guy.”

Aussie lingo of the day: “Mate.” It really is common. It replaces friend, generic “man,” and just about any other personal pronoun. “What’s up, man?” becomes, “What’s up, mate?”